Companies have been doing their segmentation based on industry verticals for several decades. Vertical knowledge as a key differentiator has been added into the equation in a more recent history. Yet not all companies in a vertical are faced with the same problems and priorities at the same time. All of this has led to some important inefficiencies.

• People had to be trained on specific vertical knowledge and product knowledge leading to long ramp up times for people in a multi offering company
• Sales & Marketing facing difficulty to match specific needs in a vertical to the product offering
• Sub optimal Product/technology innovation due to conflicts in priorities
• Product releases not adapted to market readiness leading  to a high cost of sales and low hit-rate
• A frustrated sales force and an unhealthy tension between departments because their concerns are left unanswered by management
• Sales loosing a lot of time in finding the “needle in a haystack” prospects

A lack of “scalability” throughout the entire value chain is the root cause . The impact on scalability of an organization should be taken into account in each decision you take.

Let me propose how to use segmentation as a way to better align marketing and sales thus improving the scalability of your organization:

• Get to “really’ know your customers by understanding the problems their faced with.
• Define KPI-level pains a prospect should be confronted with in order to seek your leadership. (i.e. VP-Sales- not meeting sales target or too high cost-of-sales)
• Map your differentiators and delivered capabilities to those pains.
• You will now be able to create a set of “pain-based segments”
• Plot your segments in terms of size, solution awareness in the market and level of differentiation.
• You will now be able to prioritize your pain-based segments
• Identify the impacted people in their organization as high as possible on the org-chart which could or will be involved in a buying cycle (key-contacts)
• Map above information for each of them and rank them in terms of impact. The most impacted person will become key in your marketing and sales approach
• You should now be able to write a value proposition for each of the targeted segments. This value proposition is the foundation for all buyer-aligned deliverables such as white papers, solution briefs, case studies, product collateral etc.
• Build a sales kit per segment covering the quantified pains, their causes, needed capabilities, quantified results, ideal buying criteria, benefits and unique features per key-contact
• Populate and qualify your database with suspects based on their pains and readiness to buy and launch a lead generation and/or lead nurturing program to start generating qualified leads for sales.

Above will result in an increased focus:

• More engaged employees
• A lower time to productivity as low as 6 to 7 months for complex solutions
• Increased hit-rate up to 75% and more depending on the level of differentiation you can proof
• Decreased cost of sales by at least 22%

Above shows how segmentation can have an important impact in terms of a better sales and marketing alignment.

Write a comment or question to dig deeper into this improved way of segmentation.